After I was cast as a kosher butcher in the synagogue’s Purimshpiel - a little 30-or-40-minute skit based on The Book of Esther, another tale of genocide averted, this time in ancient Persia- the director asked me to get some "butcher paper" at the grocery for a prop. I already had a rubber chicken, a dull leaver and an apron on which I’d smeared ketchup to look like blood.

So I go to the local supermarket and the aisle devoted to foils and wraps, shelves stacked with sandwich bags, garbage and lawn bags, storage bags, aluminum foil, parchment paper, store brand as well as brand-name – Glad, Reynolds, Alcoa – some wrapping material I’d never even considered before (fruit, pastries, boxes and bins, in a variety of geometrical shapes). Nothing is labeled "butcher paper."

On a long box like a loaf of French bread labeled "Freezer Paper" I see a picture of a hunk of meat placed on a square of this “freezer paper,” and I think of a schochet in some Galician shtetl (forget that this is in Persia, we take liberties with the text; for instance, we’ve made this a parody of The Book of Mormon with songs like “I Am Diaspora” to the tune if “I Am Africa,” etc.). If this isn’t “butcher paper,” it’s the closest thing I can find. My fingers itch to tear it open and look, but if it isn’t what I’m looking for, I’ll have to pay for it anyway, right? You break it, you buy it. I decide to risk it, take it to the self-checkout station.

But as I go to the cash registers, I pass a man in an apron just like mine and store ballcap putting packages of meat in the meat display, an African-American guy probably in his early forties. If anybody can clarify this for me, it’s him.

“Excuse me, sir!" I call to him. "Is this butcher paper?” I show him to freezer paper.

“Yes,” he confirms, and I thank him, but as I turn to go, he asks what exactly I want to wrap.

“Well, I’m in this play, actually,” I tell him, “and I’m playing a butcher.”

He breaks out into a huge grin, suddenly intrigued by the possibilities. “Where is this?”

"It's at Beth Am Synagogue,” I tell him. I don’t know how much he knows about Purim, sometimes thought of as Jewish Halloween since people generally dress up in costumes and enjoy treats. It’s kind of an obscure holiday, compared to Rosh Hashanah or Passover – and face it, it’s only a month from Passover anyway, gets overlooked the way Baltimore gets overlooked as a city by its proximity to Washington DC. “It's essentially a comedy. These two rabbis come into my shop asking for directions..."

He sticks his hand out and shakes mine vigorously, the way you might congratulate somebody.

"Do us proud!" he says.​It was a good omen.

About the Author:Charles Rammelkamp lives in Baltimore where he edits an online literry journal called The Potomac and is the Prose Editor at BrickHouse Books in Baltimore.